More photos about peacocks and choi sum

Veggielution’s workdays are on Saturdays now, and I’ve not been able to make it to the farm every week. Today was the last dry day before epic rain, and I decided to make pasta. Zan, one of our Americorps staff, helped me roll it out.

and I made a sauce for it out of, you guessed it! choi sum (as well as other bitter greens and some broccoli.)

(In the background, you can see the jar of incredibly spicy Pakistani pickled chilis that I was gifted at my knitting retreat last week. Good, though.)

Today we were preparing for the storms, mainly by mulching with straw. Al, one of the rangers, came roaring up on the tractor to deliver the rotten bales.

We had some very beautiful clouds at lunch time.

And here is the obligatory peacock photo.

So. One of the (lame) excuses I’ve been using for not blogging is that a project has come up that I didn’t feel comfortable talking about online yet, but which would dominate my sustainable food life, were it to come to pass. Then I saw an article in the Mercury News about it, and so there’s not really any point in keeping it a secret anymore, at least from my vast readership.

Veggielution, in the person of Amie and I, has been offered the opportunity of running the produce stand at the new downtown San José public market. Since hearing about this project, I’ve wanted to be a part of it, and now I have quite a large part of it, if I can make it work. This will entail creating a for-profit entity that will source as much as possible from Veggilution itself, and the rest from the Santa Clara Valley and as slightly-beyond as we can manage, trying to keep everything as local and seasonal as possible. Is downtown San José ready for a produce stand where you can’t buy tomatoes in December, or bananas ever? But one where you can get enthusiastic recommendations for recipes and techniques and free samples of roasted rutabagas?

On Wednesday, I’m off to the Ecological Farming Association Conference, known as “Eco-Farm.” I attended Eco-Farm two years ago, alone, and knowing no one (although I was happy to see Tom Broz and Debbie Palmer of Live Earth Farm there) but hoping to make some connections and somehow get more involved with the sustainable food movement, more involved than just reading blogs. I don’t know whether I accomplished that, but I did learn a lot. And when I got involved with Veggielution last year, I knew that we’d all make valuable connections and learn even more if we all went this year.

Two years ago, it rained nonstop when I was at Asilomar, and there was even snow on the Santa Lucias as we drove around on a school gardens tour. This year, it looks set to repeat the crazy weather, but I’m attending the sustainable business pre-conference, instead. And I have a private room, so I don’t have to put up with a skanky roommate bringing in a stranger into her bed after midnight. And I’ll have my Veggielution posse with me; I’m really looking forward to it.